are already so greatly and unjustly deprived of an important part of the representation, a still greater share; to endeavor to establish the first precedent, which extreme rashness and temerity have ever presumed, that Congress has a right to touch the question and legislate on slavery; thereby shaking the property in them, in the Southern and Western States, to its very foundation, and making an attack which, if successful, must convince them that the Northern and Eastern States are their greatest enemies; that they are preparing measures for them which even Great Britain in the heat of the Revolutionary War, and when all her passions were roused by hatred and revenge to the highest pitch never ventured to inflict upon them. Instead of a course like this, they ought, in my judgment, sir, to be highly pleased with their present situation; that they are fully represented, while we have lost so great a share of our representation; they ought, sir, to be highly pleased at the dexterity and management of their members in the Convention, who obtained for them this great advantage; and, above all, with the moderation and forbearance with which the Southern and Western States have always borne their many bitter provocations on this subject, and now bear the open, avowed, and, by many of the ablest men among them, undisguised attack on our most valuable rights and properties.…
The revolt of New Jersey and Pennsylvania accelerated the new Constitution. On a motion from Virginia the Convention met at Philadelphia, where, as you will find from the Journals, we were repeatedly in danger of dissolving without doing any thing; that body being equally divided as to large and small States, and each having a vote, and the small States insisting most pertinaciously, for near six weeks, on equal power in both branches—nothing but the prudence and forbearance of the large States saved the Union. A compromise was made, that the small States and large should be equally represented in the Senate, and proportionally in the House of Representatives. I am now arrived at the reason for which I have, sir, taken the liberty to make these preliminary remarks. For, as the true motive for all this dreadful clamor throughout the Union, this serious and eventful attack on our most sacred and valuable rights and properties, is, to gain a fixed ascendency in the representation in Congress; and, as the only flimsy excuse under which the Northern and Eastern States shelter themselves, is, that they have been hardly treated in the representation of this House, and that they have lost the benefit of the compromise they pretend was made, and which I shall most positively deny, and show that nothing like a compromise was ever intended.
By all the public expenses being borne by indirect taxes, and
